Americans own on average eight smart devices, and they plan to buy four more over the next 12 months, said a Reviews.org survey of 1,000 consumers. Categories with the highest purchase intent are smartphones, smart speakers, smart hub displays, Wi-Fi-enabled headphones and smartwatches. About 85% of consumers own two or more smart devices, the same percentage as those owning smartphones. Over a third of U.S. households have a smart speaker, 26% a smart TV, 15% video doorbells and 26% smartwatches.

Retail sales are expected to grow 5.5% in the back-to-school selling season July 15-Sept. 6 compared with the similar 2020 period, reported Mastercard’s SpendingPulse Thursday. It’s projecting 6.7% growth this year compared with the similar pre-pandemic period in 2019. Electronics sales are projected to grow 13% year over year and 9.6% compared with 2019, it said: “If we learned one thing this past year, it’s that technology keeps us connected.” SpendingPulse measures in-store and online retail sales across all payment forms.

The U.S. PC market grew 73% year on year in Q1, with total shipments of desktops, notebooks, tablets and workstations exceeding 34 million units, reported Canalys Tuesday. For the first time since Q3 2019, Apple lost its position as the top PC vendor in the U.S. (including tablets), despite 36% growth, Canalys said, noting Apple “performed well considering Q1 tends to be a weaker quarter for Mac and iPad shipments.” Notebooks (up 131%) and tablets (52%) led overall shipments, while desktops lagged amid “weak demand” during the COVID-19 pandemic, said the researcher. “The PC industry recorded incredible shipment numbers in Q1 2021, though some of this growth can be attributed to the industrywide struggles seen in Q1 2020,” said Canalys analyst Brian Lynch, but the quarter still ranks as “one of the best first quarters the industry has ever seen.” Vendors prioritized fulfilling U.S. backlogs before addressing supply issues in other parts of the world, he said. Notebook shipments grew by 131% year on year, driven by order backlogs and continued demand to support remote work and education. Tablet units topped 11 million in the quarter as demand spilled over from the December holiday period, it said. HP shipments grew 123% to 7.2 million, for 21% share, on commercial backlog fulfillment and strong Chromebook demand. Apple followed with 6.7 million shipments for 20% share. Dell, in third place, grew shipments by 29% to 4.7 million units at just over 14% share, with Lenovo ranking fourth, growing 93% to 3.4 million shipments and nearly 14% share. Samsung had a 116% increase in the quarter to 3.4 million shipments for 10% share. Much of the “record-breaking growth” over the past year was driven by a surge in Chromebook sales for education, along with 92% year-on-year growth in the consumer segment, Canalys said. Third-place Dell lagged the growth rate of the other top five vendors “due to its weaker position in the consumer and education segments,” it said. The U.S. Chromebook market grew 548% over the past year, led by Samsung in its U.S. market debut. Trends will continue due to ongoing investments in digital education: “There is no return to normal for education,” said analyst Ishan Dutt, saying the growing Chromebook installed base will lead to “consistent upgrades and support for the product line.”

Connected TV viewing leveled off after being “pulled forward” due to COVID-19 in 2020, reported Leichtman Research Group Friday. Some 39% of adults in U.S. TV households watch video daily on an internet-connected TV, vs. 40% in 2020 and 31% in 2019. Just over a third of pay-TV subscribers watch video daily via a connected TV vs. 50% of non-pay-TV viewers. Some 43% of TVs in U.S. households are smart models, up from 32% two years ago. Fifty-five percent of TV households have at least one stand-alone streaming device, vs. 49% in 2019. Households with at least one connected TV device inched up to 82% from 80% last year and 74% in 2019. The April-May survey was of 1,250 consumers online and about 750 via phone.

Thirty-nine percent of U.S. homes said they were likely to buy consumer tech gear within 12 months, when surveyed early in Q2, reported CTA Thursday. That's an 11-point increase from the same 2020 survey. The association canvassed 2,400 adults online April 9-18, finding 37% plan to buy new smartphones in the next year, compared with 29% who plan to buy new TVs. Ownership of 4K Ultra HD TVs surpassed a majority of U.S. homes for the first time, said CTA. The sets are installed in 52% of TV households, a 16-point increase from a year earlier and the largest growth for any product category surveyed. CTA estimates overall TV ownership at 91% of U.S. homes, edging out smartphones (90%) as the most commonly owned tech device. TV ownership was 98% in 2013 and 97% in 2014, but has been "steadily decreasing over the years as consumers transition to watching content" on their mobile devices, said a spokesperson. The year-over-year decline to 91% in 2021 from 93% in 2020 was within the survey's margin of error of plus or minus 2%, she said. Nielsen had a different take when it pegged TV penetration last summer at 96.2% of U.S. homes, trending 0.1% higher from a year earlier. Nielsen's estimate, its most recent available, was the percentage of total U.S. homes with TVs receiving traditional signals via over-the-air antenna, cable, satellite or broadband.

The average notebook PC's “refresh cycle” is roughly a year and a half “quicker” than for desktops, creating demand that's compounding the public’s hunger for laptops for remote work and learning connectivity, Dell Technologies founder-CEO Michael Dell told a Bernstein virtual investor conference Wednesday. Average selling prices for notebooks “are going up as people want bigger displays and more capable systems,” he said. “The oldest PC in your house can't really do a Zoom meeting.” Dell is confident that demand in the PC supply chain is genuine and not the result of “double ordering,” he said. “The thing that we watch very closely is the cancellation rate of orders in the backlog.” As lead times increased, “we have not seen cancellation rates go up, and so we are delivering record numbers of PCs and the output continues to grow,” he said. “If you were going to see double ordering, you would also see cancellations coming through the backlog. We're just not seeing that.” Backlogs “are certainly higher than normal, higher than we would like, and the pricing environment has been kind of what you would expect in a situation like this,” said Dell.

Eighty-two percent of U.S. broadband households buy over-the-top video service, reported Parks Associates Thursday. High penetration is leading virtual MVPDs to explore new strategies, including expanded IP and AI-powered enhancements, said analyst Steve Nason. Service stacking is trending higher, with 46% of households subscribing to four or more OTT services, said Matt Smith, Symphony MediaAI vice president-business development, saying vMVPDs wonder “when, not if, the tipping point will come.” Preventing churn requires “solving the industry’s core challenge: making it easy for consumers to find exactly what they want,” said Scott Hancock, Plex vice president-marketing. Parks holds its virtual Future of Video conference Wednesday.

PCs will remain one of the many thriving categories in the consumer tech space this year, reported IDC Tuesday. It’s forecasting 18.1% growth in shipments this year to 357 million units. Though IDC expects shipments to decline by about 3% in 2022, the overall five-year compound annual growth rate outlook “remains positive at 3%,” it said. “We continue to get an abundance of questions about the growing semiconductor shortage and its impact on PCs,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith. “We don't debate that the overall semiconductor market is constrained right now, but for the overall PC market it is a very different narrative than the years leading up to the pandemic.” As the chip shortages continue into 2022, IDC anticipates at least some buyers “will settle for desktops in place of notebooks as the urgency of demand for any kind of PC remains quite high,” said analyst Jitesh Ubrani. “Longer term, the consumer refresh cycle is also expected to be pulled in slightly as the pandemic has raised the profile of PCs and consumers continue to spend more time and dollars on PC gaming and content consumption.”

Consumer intentions to buy new TV sets declined in May from April, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the Conference Board, the first time it did the survey online (see 2105180017). The board switched survey vendors to online research specialist Toluna from Nielsen, which for years canvassed consumers by mail. “The improved quality of online surveys over the past several years coupled with declining mail survey response rates made this a good time to transition” to an online methodology, said the think tank. Toluna polled 3,000 U.S. homes through May 19, finding 11% plan to buy a new TV in the next six months, down from 11.6% in April and flat compared with 11% in May 2020, said the board. Consumer confidence was unchanged in May after rebounding sharply in March and April, it said: “Consumers’ short-term optimism retreated, prompted by expectations of decelerating growth and softening labor market conditions in the months ahead.”

Top cable providers had a Q1 net loss of about 775,000 video subscribers, reported Leichtman Research Group Wednesday. Losses in Q1 2020 were 595,000. Comcast slid 491,000 to 19.3 million. AT&T Premium TV, Dish Network, Verizon Fios and Frontier shed 865,000, led by AT&T Premium. Top publicly reporting virtual MVPDs lost 255,000 vs. 210,000 exits a year ago. Overall, top U.S. pay-TV providers dropped 1.89 million vs. 1.95 million losses a year ago. The only pay-TV service to post Q1 gains was fuboTV, which added 42,550 to reach 590,430. Hulu shed 200,000 to 3.8 million, and Sling TV dropped 100,000 to 1.4 million. The top seven cable companies have 43.1 million of the 78.7 million pay-TV subscribers. Other traditional pay-TV services have 28.9 million and vMVPDs 6.7 million. Over the past year, top pay-TV providers lost 4.79 million vs. a loss of 5.12 million in the prior year, said Principal Bruce Leichtman.